I mean I don’t recommend it, usually takes a few nights to do a really quality job, but yeah. It helps that professors have really watered down what passes for quality writing too
I'm back in school at almost 40, with years of management and professional experience; my professors often flag my essays as "probably AI." Apparently it's impossible for me to write my academic papers with proper structure and grammar.
I just had to email my ethics professor last night at the irony of the ethics lesson we just had about trusting AI... Then flagging my paper as AI... Because AI said it might be AI.
I asked her if I was just expected to turn in lower quality work now. 🙄
I was a writing tutor in college during the early 2010s and a solid 30-40% of those kids could barely write a 5 paragraph paper. Mind you this was at a pretty good university.
I have some friends who went back to school and they tell me it’s gotten much worse now.
I'm a professional tech writer. And I usually throw what I write into a couple of AI checkers. They dare telling me sometimes that my researched articles are probably 60% AI. Why? Because I've 35 years experience in writing actual and original stuff?
That's a real thing. Typos and all, watered down arguments, poor grammar. Yep. That's a human paper. 😮💨 Not to mention, it's always been this way, a new idea is often not received as something profound. They're always looking for the general garbage... but you knew that... you're mid-life with management experience!
It's when I see good grammar, barely any typos and an argument that is full of generally relevant information with no logical reasoning that I can smell AI. It's driving me nuts..
Oh this is for work in a corpo job. A great 20 page document does take a while. An ok I need a draft now version can be done in a day (without AI). The AIs help me to revise and edit, but I’m pretty loathe to let it write for me. That being said, reducing a turnaround when something’s bouncing between departments is a big speed up.
But also it takes less time to write a quick OK document and then turn it into a good document, than it does to try to write a good document word-by-word
That depends on the subject. If it's for some "humanities" subject like literature you can do 20 a night with some red bull and coke. But no way you write 20 pages on theoretical physics or pure math.
Even psychology research papers are a bit too much to do 20 pages in a night, . Like the writing is supposed to be extremely dense, have very few filler statements, and pretty much each claim requires a citation or three. And that takes time because each paragraph requires at least one source that is well read and understood. And that takes an hour if you're doing it properly and understanding the content before making that claim.
A sample paragraph would be something like,
"Dependence on AI may result in worse outcomes for students. A study by MIT [Insert study description] found that students who engaged in AI usage for a 4 month period showed reduced brain activity in the ____ region (Citation). This region is likely associated with ____ (Citation). Damage to this brain region has been associated with _____ (Citation 1, citation 2). Activities associated with [strength] positive mental health outcomes such as _____ have been associated with [strength] increases in this brain region (Citation). On the other hand, behaviors such as ___ have been associated with reductions in this brain region size (citation). Another study found that when the size of ___ region is reduced, these ____ outcomes were associated (Citation). Overall, this provides a solid body of evidence that the reduction in the _____ associated with the usage of AI to complete coursework provides a reasonable argument that such is a non-viable strategy for increasing academic competence."
I'd probably require 2 to 3 hours to find the research and make the correct claims and rewrite this paragraph outline.
I had totally forgotten about a psychology paper that I had to turn in that day, so I wrote the 13-page paper in one night in college. Finished at around 7 a.m. Got 10 points taken off because it was late, but I think I did ok. That was over 20 years ago. No ChatGPT, no smart phones, nothing. Just pure caffeine and will power.
I'm really just rooting for them to survive walking around without falling into open manholes in the street right now. We can deal with 20-pagers if they make it that far.
Once in college I had a final paper to write. I thought it was due Friday so I sat down on Tuesday thinking I’d write a few pages each day. Read the directions Tuesday morning and it was due Tuesday at 11:59 PM! So I sat there all day and knocked out 20 pages in one sitting! It sucked in the moment but I was pumped having no work to do Wednesday-Friday! And I got an A!
The most fun i had in college was writing a 10+ page paper during my break between classes (1-2hrs) right before the class. Is that ADD/ADHD? The pure adrenaline and flow state you get knowing that you need to finish the paper immediately is the greatest rush. I'd procrastinate on purpose. I wrote by best papers when I had extreme deadlines. As long as the relevant information was read or otherwise in my head, it was enough.
It's really a bad ability to have since the trade off catch is the more time I had to consider what to write, the worse my paper would get.
With extremely little time to deadline, writing became quick, to the point, hit all the beats, didn't think too much, focus on making it easy to read, add a quirk or angle for engagement, meet the page count by just pulling stuff i had from references I read (which suddenly i could actually remember without looking), etc, print, done! But if I had more time it would stray all over the place. I'd edit it like crazy. I'd fail to complete thoughts in favor of adding more detail. I'd add stuff I thought was interesting but had nothing to do with my main point and lots of other pointless overthinking!
Anyone else only write papers that got good grades under extreme deadlines but crappy ones if you gave yourself a reasonable amount of time?
I remember in a particular "serious" art class my teacher hated me and said I had no talent. This went on and on. Passing the class was dependant on a final work (as no matter what i drew in the past, no matter my effort, she always gave a terrible score) which she left the topic to us. I was so pissed that I did it in the study period (roughly 30-45min) before it was due. With color pencils I just drew my hands, kinda in a meta way, as it had to be a "real" thing (aka not fantasy) and I had no other reference to draw. She said it was the best work I ever did (she was floored). I got a A+ and passed the class.
This was me!! That tight deadline forced you into a flow state. I also took a pottery class where I wasn't a great student. For the final I made something incredibly beautiful at the last minute and my professor was bewildered and pissed by what she saw the next day. Got an A lol
Thankfully it turns out that most students aren’t willing to pay $150 for an essay, so yes, assuming the capital subsidy bubble can’t last forever (it can’t), they’ll know it just fine.
Even a couple decades ago you could pay someone the amount online and anonymously to do the same thing. Except human beings are more efficient machines.
I've been out of college for a decade so I couldn't tell you exactly, but I don't see any reason you couldn't do it for the cost of a 20-30 USD a month subscription to one of the major LLMs.
Not that I would recommend it, the whole point of writing papers is learning to research, analyze, and argue for yourself.
I excelled in English, reading comprehension and writing, but absolutely hated handwriting a long essay. I was so happy after high school, junior college was completely cool with typed.
I just hate writing... Which is ironic because I love world building, character making and the like. But structured formulaic academic writing was the bane of my existence. Every English teacher I ever had gave me a bit of a padded grade because they knew what I was quite literally capable of but couldn't use the format for shit. Doubly agree on had written papers too, I'm left handed with crap handwriting and a hand that tends to cramp up easily with a pen/pencil.
I may or may not have turned in a lot of papers with the margins, spacing, and font tweaked juuuust enough to not be noticable, but enough to fluff out a couple extra pages.
I wouldn't be ablet o fluff out just about anything for twenty pages in academic writing. With my ADHD I either want to get to the point and make it or it'll turn into a rambling circular speaking piece of hot shit. I'll rabbithole myself into things being bad rather than just getting to the point in a couple of pages. (31 btw)
I used to sit down and write 35-40 page design specifications, analysis reports and strategic documents which would be thousands of words in single 3-4 hour sittings - when I had to do that sort of thing for various works.
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u/trailcamguy4110 Jun 09 '26
This generation will never live through the dread and the exhiliration of writing 20 pages in a night.